Shameful Otaku Secret!

Hotaru

Am I really watching this show? At this point in a season, it’s pretty easy with a time investment of less than 3 hours to catch up with something, and that’s the problem. I guess I have no excuse not to watch H2O.

Story

Just to recap, H2O in general concerns young Hirose Takuma, who’s moved out to the country to recover from a mysterious illness that left him blind. You know how I feel about mysterious illness, but whatever. A spirit girl who only he can see, Otoha, kisses him on the forehead and suddenly he can see — but she tells him it’s temporary. Bothered by the tomfoolery and bullshittery in this tiny village, kindly city boy Takuma goes about setting things right between the disenfranchised residents. He’s already brought homeless Hayami from a world of constant beatings at the hands of her classmates to the star seamstress of their junior high.

But the real story now appears to revolve around Hinata, whose mean-ass grandfather has done more to her in his quest to retain power than just force her to stay away from Hayami. I’d spoil it if I mentioned in too much detail, and it’s my unofficial policy not to talk about big drama-bombs until the next week when it’s time to not spoil another drama-bomb. Let’s just say, though, that it concerns her late sister.

What We’ve Learned

If you’re just dropping into this thing, there are surprises all over the place. While I easily deduced at least the general idea of what Hayami’s back story was going to be, and why the village hated her, these developments were a little more unexpected. Most notable is not the apparent main thrust of the week’s story, but the sketchbook that proves Otoha is not a figment of Takuma’s imagination — rather, she’s a figment of Hinata’s. Interesting. It’s very much the standard incidental supernatural element that tends to tie these kinds of shows together, though.

General Impressions

I don’t hate this show. The characters are not horrible, although some are really thin and most don’t act especially like kids. Takuma’s got a long way to go before he’ll win the Okazaki Good-Deed-Doer award, but he’s fairly likable (if drawn way too effeminately) and acts from pretty reasonable motivations.

Episode 4, I believe it was — the obligatory beach episode — creeped me out, not because of cross-dressing but because of fan “service.” I was waiting nervously from minute one for such an episode, though, so I guess I have myself to blame. A show focusing on protagonists of this age has infinite potential to creep me out to begin with, and that’s without little-sister panty shots.

However, I’m digressing into something that rarely enters into the show as a whole, which is pleasantly drawn (especially backgrounds) and forgettably written, but not too insulting. Propped up next to this season’s other dramas Clannad and (my current favorite show) True Tears, it looks pretty anemic but it seems like it’s going to be able to pass me by without offending my sensibilities too much, and the rural setting is a nice change of pace. Incidentally, the old three-episode litmus test was made for shows like this.

So give it a shot if you’re looking for something else to watch, it’s still not too late to catch up pretty easily. The light but nevertheless constantly-dangling mysteries provide the carrot on a stick that keeps you watching through some weak character interaction, but it should be a tasty enough carrot to keep drama fans entertained.

Theory of Everything

Well. Let me just start this off by saying that I’m fairly glad the Kotomi storyline is now over. I just don’t care. Fuko’s arc was rife with emotional dirty tricks, but they worked and the wedding episode was both cute and teary. The Kotomi story has reminded me of every reason why I find these shows so repetitive.

We begin with Tomoya continuing to work in the garden while flashbacks bring us back to the story of her parents dying, her godfather searching for a paper, and her subsequent burning of (what she thought was) said paper.

Tomoya apparently stayed away from her birthday party as a kid because he, in all his shaggy lets-help-people naïveté, invited his “real” friends and they made fun of him — not only for trying to get them to go to a stranger’s house, but for hanging out with icky cootie-infested girls. Bummer I called this incorrectly last week, but that still doesn’t make Clannad vastly different from Kanon, and who knows, I might still be right about great silly tragedy in his past.

Regardless — Who had the last laugh, now that puberty hit (for the rest of them, not so much Tomoya) and he almost exclusively hangs out with girls? He should have told them she was rich. Anyway, young Tomoya regrets not going and heads to her house to apologize, then finds the small fire that’s about to become huge and engulf the sobbing Kotomi, who’s already regretting what she’s done.

In the here and now, Tomoya finds himself falling asleep after a couple all-night gardening jams, only to be awakened by Kotomi, who has finally left her house. She clearly digs him — not in a pathetic way like Nagisa, but in the way only she, a girl smart enough to realize that he’s a wasted effort, possibly could. That no-hope, resigned to big-eyed sadness, total moe kind of crush. And there’s the thematic rub: she always waited for Tomoya-kun to come back (if there was any feasible way I could write that in the mocking tone I hear in my head, I totally would). It’s Yuichi from Kanon all freaking over again. What makes Tomoya, the perpetually dopey onii-chan with his old-school Timex Ironman watch, so appealing? Probably the audience projecting onto him. Your inability to make advances on girls will one day pay off in the form of a doting harem, my delusional otaku brethren!

I digress. Without remorse.

The birthday gift-giving from Nagisa and the twins goes well, with a lame hand-drawn “gift certificate” (you know the type) subbing in for the broken violin until it’s fixed, and an all-too-perfect visit from her godfather. What does he have? A suitcase, presumably with the paper in it. Or not?

If you haven’t seen episode 14, stop. Go bootleg it, and come back to me.

Back? How about that fucking internet, man? They got it all.

I have to say, I find the contents of the suitcase to be the unspoken tragedy of this whole storyline. It would make everything worthwhile if I thought for more than half a second that it was intentional. See, she didn’t want the fucking bear. She just said she did because she thought that’s what she was supposed to say. So her father’s dying wish, and the unlikely passing of the suitcase through Clannad’s entire godforsaken earth culminating (even more unlikely) on her birthday, is a sham. That’s really sad to me, far sadder than any of the cutey-love-fest Fuko arc.

Is that why she cried when she saw the bear? The horrific realization that she had provided her beloved parents with a baseless and false sense of accomplishment at their final moment on this mortal coil?

Or is it me being cynical, and she’s crying for the more obvious happy-sad anime reasons? I try to leave my cynicism at the door with Clannad, and I didn’t actually have a cynical reaction, but between Tomoya’s endless love of helping people and his seeming dearth of actual feelings for people themselves, this thing’s wearing me out.

But, I’ll keep coming back. Because as weak as this story arc seemed to me, it only means that one of these should be better.

What’s Next?

I was placing my chips on tough Tomoyo, whose name is just plain too close to the protagonist’s for my taste. But the next episode preview seemed to lean in Nagisa’s direction. That’s good, I guess. She needs a little more exposition if we’re going to keep following her around until the end, which I imagine we will. But I would especially like to see what the twins’ major malfunction is — especially Kyou, who seems to have her shit together so well she must be burying something.

About the Subs

One thing I have no complaints about, still, is the technical merit of this show, except maybe for Kyoto’s glaring lack of ability with feet.

But something technical that really should get some airtime, essential to our current Western experience, is the fansubbing. My hat is totally off to Static Subs and Eclipse Productions, whose subs I have been watching. You can take fansubs for granted sometimes, but here’s the deal: These cats are throwing this stuff up not only ridiculously fast (almost immediately after the show’s Japanese airing), but they are accurate and enjoyable to watch. As the week goes on, more subs start appearing online and this week I actually took the time to watch a couple. Shop around, as it were. And these guys, surprising as it is with their speed, are just plain great.

Don’t expect localization, and don’t expect ADV’s inevitable North American DVD release in the future to resemble it in any way. It’s very literal, and considering they are providing a service rather than actually licensing and releasing stuff, I think it’s their responsibility not to project interpretation onto the script. So, thanks to you — and really, to all the fansubbers out there. They do it for the love, and they do a great job.

Until next week, uh… keep it moe!